


everybody leaves and i'd expect as much from you

by okaynextcrisis



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 05:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19056064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynextcrisis/pseuds/okaynextcrisis
Summary: A funeral, a reunion, and some regrets.





	everybody leaves and i'd expect as much from you

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this after TFA in an attempt to reconcile it with the EU (Legends, whatever). Then i forgot about it, so it's even less New/Current Canon compliant than it was then. (No, Mara doesn't die in this. Hasn't she suffered enough?) Title borrowed from "Great Expectations" by The Gaslight Anthem.

It feels like a betrayal from the Force itself that her arrival isn’t heralded days in advance, that there is no prior warning; she is gone, and then she is stepping out of her ship (a sleek one-person shuttle, though the model is unfamiliar to him), shaking her hair free of her helmet, her red-gold waves shimmering too vividly in the gray morning light of the landing platform.

Her lips twitch upwards; not a smile, nothing so clear-cut, nothing that gives anything away.“Hey, farmboy.”

The old nickname stings, and he knows it’s a test: will he mask it, confess it, confront her?He still knows Mara Jade well enough to know that.

He settles for a measured nod.“Mara.”

If she’s disappointed by his reaction, she doesn’t show it.

She looks, somehow, exactly as she did the day she left, and nothing at all like the image he’s kept in his mind for three and a half years.Her hair has grown out a little, fluttering in the wind a little below the shoulders of a worn nerfhide jacket.Did she deliberately keep it neater when she was Mara Jade, Jedi Master, or is her new look part of some hustle, some new cover?(He won’t ask.)There is no blaster snugged against her right hip, but Luke knows better than to imagine she has come unarmed.Her left hip….(but of course there is no lightsaber.Mara’s lightsaber is at the Temple, in a storage locker, exactly where she left it, the day she left him.)Short boots (at least one of which, and maybe both, Luke would bet the farm he no longer possesses, containing a tiny hold-out blaster).She looks, he thinks, much like she did back when they first met, when they were both so young, when they thought they’d been through so much.

Her green eyes catch his, and he realizes that Mara has been studying him, too. 

He is suddenly conscious of the frayed material at the hem of his robes, the circles beneath his eyes, the blond that is beginning to come in gray.

But all she says as she brushes past him is “Don’t worry, Luke.I’ll be leaving right after the funeral.”

* * *

Lando’s death took them all by surprise.Sixteen days ago, Lando had been to dinner at Han and Leia’s, flirting wildly, talking up his new business venture…and now he was gone.A heart attack in his sleep; the very last way, Luke knows, his friend would have wanted to go.

But then, Luke also knows, there are worse ways.

Han seems to be taking it as well as can be expected.He’s drinking too much, betting too much at Sabacc, flying too fast…but he has Chewie to trail behind him, and Leia to refuse to take his shit, and Luke is reasonably sure his friend will pull himself together, in time.

Luke keeps busy with his apprentices, with their questions and needs and griefs, and tries not to think of the time when he had someone looking after him, too.

* * *

He doesn’t know where she goes, but he doesn’t see her again until they light the pyre.

Leia, always the unofficial hostess of these things, greets his former wife warmly…almost.The words are there, the welcome, the smile; even from Luke’s vantage point, though, standing at a discreet distance, he can pick up the wariness in Leia’s eyes, the slight chill in her voice.Luke studiously kept the reasons for their estrangement to himself, but Mara is the woman who broke her brother’s heart, and it shows in the set of Leia’s shoulders, the particular way she takes Mara’s hand.

There’s something in the tilt of Mara’s chin, her clear eyes, that tells Luke she’d expected worse.

He remembers the way Leia and Mara used to laugh together, and some small still-intact part of his heart breaks anew. 

It had meant so much to Mara to belong to a family.

Han’s greeting is more straightforward; a brief handshake, a silent communication between two sets of sad eyes, and Mara stands beside him.(Because it’s safe, Luke knows; no one will risk Han’s ire to approach her, and she knows Han has no desire to discuss her failed marriage.)When Chewie, growling with commingled joy and grief, sweeps her up in a fierce hug, Luke has to turn away.

He watches Lando’s mortal remains turn to ash from the back of the crowd, his apprentices surrounding him, his nephew Ben at his side.

He is grateful for the cover of darkness, and his raised cowl.He would not have wanted to explain to his protégé why even a Jedi Master could find himself struggling with unbecoming emotion at the death of an old friend, or why his eyes kept seeking out, even in the darkness, a reassuring glimpse of red-gold hair.

* * *

He passes the night in silent meditation, praying for answers, for clarity, for peace. 

When he gives up hope of that, he gets to his feet, and goes to wait at the landing platform.

* * *

Mara is already there, tanking off her little ship, making a few last-minute adjustments.She is standing with her back to him, and there is no indication, from the smooth motions of her hands on her gears and knobs, that she’s aware of his presence.

But of course she is, just as he knew to be on the platform yesterday, waiting for someone he didn’t know was coming.

They will never be quite done with each other, maybe.They will never quite sever their ties.

“You could stay.”

The words surprise him, even as they’re coming out of his mouth, but he can tell by the slow turn of her body that she knew this was coming.

“You know I can’t.”

Forty months he’s spent seeking acceptance, and he’s suddenly as far away as ever.

“Why?” he demands.“Because you don’t approve of the way I’m training the new Jedi?Because you didn’t want the Temple rebuilt?People work on things, Mara, they fight, they _stay_ —”

“Because I was taken away from my parents, and I’m not helping it happen to anyone else.I’m not watching you fail.I’m not waiting to see them turn against you.”

He is baffled, once again, by how she can keep coming back to that, as though his guardianship for Ben and the others is anything like her bleak childhood, her training in death and pain and vengeance.

“I’m not the Emperor, Mara.”

Surely, if she’d ever loved him, that would go without saying.

When she speaks, her voice is soaked in weariness, as though she is suddenly feeling every bit their collective ages.“The Emperor wasn’t always the Emperor, either, Luke.”

There is nothing to say to that (nothing new) and so he doesn’t respond.

Her face softens, and he remembers a hundred battles, fought side by side; remembers falling asleep, her head pillowed on his shoulder; remembers a warmth in the Force that wasn’t just Mara, but their connection, their communion, their bone-deep trust.

There are no tears in her eyes, but he knows, the way his lost hand sometimes still aches, that she’s crying, anyway.

“I love you, farmboy.”

And then she turns away, without waiting for him to reply, and slips into her ship, and is gone.

He will wonder, for the rest of his life, if it would have changed anything if he’d called out after her.

If it would have changed everything.


End file.
